Malawi: Everybody's Hinterland

Abstract

The colonization of Malawi produced a revolution in spatial relations among the inhabitants of the territory. Individuals in different parts of the country experienced colonization in different ways. These divergent effects were the result of three different spatial variables: the location of administrative centers, schools and-paradoxically, least importantly-the African population. The process began in the early 1890s during the regime of the first British executive officer, Harry Johnston (later Sir Harry), who held the title of Commissioner and Consul-General. Johnston had little in the way of money or military force at his disposal and was obliged to act with extreme circumspection. The British treasury was, as ever, extremely reluctant to provide money for the conquest of the territory, forcing Johnston to rely on Cecil Rhodes for private support. At one point, he had to suspend military activities against the Yao chief, Makanjira, until Rhodes had replenished his coffers. Given this constraint, Johnston undertook to defeat African kingdoms one at a time in a policy of divide and rule. This put a brake on the British occupation of the land. Johnston did not divide the country into administrative districts in 1894, some three years after the declaration of the formal protectorate. Johnston's first goal was to gain control of the major communications arteries, the Shire River and the western shore of Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi). He divided the protectorate into twelve districts, eight of them south of the lake and four extending westward from the lake shore. Bases in all of these districts would have provided him with a secure military hold on the territory. In 1894, however, Johnston's territorial organization was more a plan than a reality. The government's foothold was relatively secure in the south, where Rhodes'e subvention had enabled Johnston to defeat Yao chiefs in 1893. The protectorate had five administrative centers along the Shire: Port Herald (now Nsanje), Chiromo, Chikawa, Liwonde, and Fort Johnston (now Mangoche), and three in the Shire Highlands at the older settlements of Blantyre and Zomba and a base at Fort Anderson (now Mulanje) near the Portuguese border. The lake shore was a different matter. The government had bases in only two of the four districts, North Nyasa and Marimba, where government posts at Karonga and Kota Kota (now Nkhota Kota) operated at the sufferance of Swahili slave traders.